Supporter

I'm a "former" major league baseball fan who has not watched a game since the strike/lockout of '94. With the football season now underway, I've been watching more ESPN and ESPN2, which run score tickers at the bottom of the screen. I've seen the term "walk-off HR" listed several times next to a player's game summary in the ticker. I actually had to look in a game summary to find out what the heck this meant. For anyone who does not know, it indicates a winning home run that ends the game (bottom on 9th or bottom of an extra inning game).
I watched a lot of baseball and followed the stats and box scores closely from 1970 until giving up the game in '94 (though I started losing interest in the early '90's), and I never remember seeing this term used before. Is this something recent, or is my memory that bad?
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Scott,
I believe it is ESPN's new term for the year. Or maybe it started last year. It hasn't been used for that long. I'd much prefer they go back to "game winning HR."
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Adrian Jones

Moderator

A Game-winning home run doesn't necessarily denote WHEN the homer was hit (meaning someone could hit the homer in the 7th innings and it made the difference in the game). A Walk-off home run does denote WHEN the homer was hit.
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Supporter

Well, I'm glad to know that my memory is not fading. When I first saw the term on the bottom ticker, I read it as "walk" and "off HR". I kept thinking to myself "what the hell is an off HR?".
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Heh heh, I can sympathise with your confusion Scott. Seems like they add at least one new stat a year. Sooner or later we're gonna run out of letters for the acronyms, and have to start using symbols.
"Boy, Bret Boone's R#* percentage is off the charts this year! He's got a lock on MVP!"

The first time I heard it was two or three years ago when Dennis Eckersley was a guest announcer on an A's broadcast. If you know Eck you know he sometimes speaks in his own language. The A's announcers adopted the term and it has obviously spread. I don't much care for it but the credit/blame might go to Eck.

Dennis Eckersley coined it a "walk off job" when he gave up a 9th-inning HR that ended the game - which became a "walk off HR" when it entered the mainstream.
Eckersley has some other good ones, too, but that seems to be the one that "stuck".

I like the term walk off home run. It sounds very final but I guess game ending home run does too.
Speaking of new (at least to me in the last couple of years) stat its WHIP. When did the Elias Sports Bureau start the Walks and Hits per inning pitched?
Patrick
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The WHIP (Walks+Hits per Inning Pitched), also called "Ratio" has become a popular stat for pitchers due to fantasy (Rotisserie) leagues, where this is a category often tracked.
Obviously the lower the WHIP, the better for a pitcher. This, along with ERA, give a good indication of a pitcher's effectiveness. A WHIP of less than about 1.10 is excellent, above about 1.35 is not so good.

I just remember seeing this term in the last couple of years and pretty much exclusively on ESPN.
The funny thing is it doesn't have to be a home run that ends the game. Sometimes you see "Walk-off BB", a walk-off walk.
Rob
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"That suits me down to the ground."

James has it on the money. This term was coined by Dennis Eckersley. I think he's used a few variations "Walk off job", "Walk off piece" and "Walk off home run". He still does the radio work for the Red Sox, doesn't he?
Another great term is the Japanese "Sayonara Home Run"...that's pretty good too.
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